Among the Celestials : vol.1 / Page 291 (Color Image)

0291	Among the Celestials : vol.1

CHAP. Ix.] THE SHIGAR VALLEY. 245

tired out, it was only something unusually

striking that had produced any impression

upon me, and I would pass by peaks of

marvellous grandeur with only a weary upward

glance at them, and sometimes even a longing

that they had never existed to bar my way

and keep me from my journey's end. But

now, seated on the back of a pony miserable

little animal though it was —I had no longer

that load of weariness weighing upon me, and

could quietly drink in all the pleasure which

looking on that glorious mountain scenery

gives.

The Shigar valley is from two to three miles

broad ; its bottom is covered over with village

lands, where apricot trees are grown in hun

dreds, and these trees now, in the autumn sea

son, were clothed in foliage of every lovely tint

of red and purple and yellow. This mass of

bright warm foliage filled the valley bottom,

then above it rose the bare rugged mountain-

sides, and crowning these the everlasting snows.

The sun shone out in an unclouded, deep-blue

sky ; the icy blasts of the Mustagh were left

behind for good and all ; and we were in an

ideal climate, with no extremes of either heat

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